“You now have to acknowledge this reality, confirm that everything I said is no bluff – which it isn’t – think for some time, send into retirement the people stuck in the past and incapable of looking into the future, [and] stop rocking the boat that we all ride in and which is called planet Earth.”

No U.S. Senate subcommittee has been established to study it. No Stratfor analyst is bleating about it. And no New York Times literary genius has reported it. Regardless of their negligence though, the waking reality of Putin’s unstoppable “Assassin Nuke” is crystal clear. The U.S. backed liberal world order is on notice now, that Putin and Russia will “get you” no matter what! If worse comes to worst, that is. No, Putin did not take aim at Florida residents or Mickey Mouse in his State of the Nation Address to the Russian Federal Assembly. His genius mastermind has instead sought and found a more meaningful target. Putin’s super-secret doomsday weapons are aimed at the world’s deadliest enemies.

Today in America every news outlet is harping about Mr. Putin’s “killer nukes” – weapons systems he says are unstoppable. Interestingly, the Russian president’s most recent strategy seems to come as a surprise. But why? After all, he and Russia have been under siege from western maniacs many long years now. For those who a reeling at figuring out his resolve, Putin’s unflinching missile rhetoric is dead simple. The war of ideologies and energy distribution is not about Russians and American slaughtering one another. This new Cold War is a battle to the death in between Vladimir Putin, his allies, and the normal people of Earth, and a ghastly brotherhood hell bent on enslaving the world. What CNN viewers are witnessing today, it’s a misinterpreted and convoluted idea of the clash of civilizations. As usual, CNN is lying. Here’s the real scoop.

“FLORIDA, how dare he,” the smartphone tapping Millennials at every Orlando Starbuck’s locations exclaim! The CNN watchers in the U.S.A. are, after all, the multitude despite what you hear about ratings. I know my people, and my people love their reality short, sweet, and when it coincides with decades old societal brainwashing. This is why V.V. Putin’s revelation is being misunderstood. The liberal order wants Putin’s message to be about Russians versus Americans. But a Russian nuclear powered missile that can fly forever until it finds an opening to its target, it’s not a missile intended to eradicate innocent Americans. The unlimited flight range and invulnerability to missile and air defense systems this “Assassin Nuke” possesses simply ensures Russia will never, ever, ever be attacked by the west. Surprised, aren’t you? Well, let me quote Putin directly on Russia’s spanking new nuclear fueled nuke:

“A low-flying low-visibility cruise missile armed with a nuclear warhead and possessing a practically unlimited range, unpredictable flight path and the capability to impregnate practically all interception lines is invulnerable to all existing and future anti-missile and air defense weapons.”

Looking at the Russian president’s presentation the other day, and carefully listening to his words, watching his body language – there’s no doubt the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces possess just such a weapon. But those interested should also take note, the visual of Donald Trump’s country club at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida carried the most important message. Putin’s cryptic signal to Trump, the Clintons, the Rothschilds, and to the military industrialists was barefaced. “Even if you destroy us, our deadliest weapons will seek you all out indefinitely,” and this Putin showed once again, his genius and indomitability. Win or lose, the bad guys are going to die. Isn’t that beautiful and refreshing?

We needn’t do a capability assessment on the Scramjet Hypersonic Cruise Missile or the deadly Status 6 Nuclear Torpedo. For it is not the viability or destructive capabilities of these weapons that was the point of Putin’s “no bluff” pronouncement. The intended recipients of Vladimir’s warning know full well the implications of exacting Armageddon on your individual enemies. The message for me looks like Putin setting a fully loaded revolver on the table and inviting the western oligarchs to start the game of Russian roulette. Put bluntly, the message reads: “I’m coming after YOU if this shit finally goes south.” Somehow I always knew the message and the strategy would come to this. A few days ago I told Sputnik “the man has no bluff in him” – and here we are witnessing the last straw being set:

“You now have to acknowledge this reality, confirm that everything I said is no bluff – which it isn’t – think for some time, send into retirement the people stuck in the past and incapable of looking into the future, [and] stop rocking the boat that we all ride in and which is called planet Earth.”

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

Like this:

“We had no business going into Iraq in the first place and we have no business remaining in Iraq. Al-Qaeda and ISIS emerged in Iraq because our attack and occupation of the country 15 years ago created fertile fields for extremism. Nothing will be achieved if we remain. Let’s listen to the Iraqis and just come home!”

With permission from

This month marks the 15th anniversary of the US war on Iraq. The “shock and awe” attack was launched based on “stove-piped” intelligence fed from the CIA and Pentagon through an uncritical and compliant US mainstream media. The US media was a willing accomplice to this crime of aggression committed by the George W. Bush Administration.

Despite the lies we were constantly bombarded with, Iraq never presented a threat to the United States. Iraq never had the weapons of mass destruction that the neocons used to frighten Americans into supporting the war. How many of them knew all along that there were no WMDs? We’ll never know. Attacking Iraq and overthrowing its leader was long a plan in the neocon playbook and they used the 9/11 attack on the US as an excuse to pull the plan off the shelf and put it into action.

The US “regime change” war on Iraq has directly resulted in the death of at least a quarter of a million civilians, and indirectly perhaps a million Iraqis have been killed. The Iraqi infrastructure was destroyed and the country was set back many decades in development. Far from the democratization we were promised, Iraq has been turned into a hell on earth. Due to the US use of depleted uranium and other chemical weapons like white phosphorus, Iraqis will continue to suffer from birth defects and other related illnesses for generations.

How did we get there? War propaganda was essential in paving the way for the Iraq war. Americans are generally skeptical about launching new wars, so it takes a steady media bombardment about the alleged depravities of any targeted regime before public opinion begins to shift in favor of war.

Because the neocons who helped launch the war have never had to face the consequences of their actions, they continue to promote war with impunity. Just this past week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was pushing for a US attack on North Korea in which millions may be killed. He said this weekend, “All the damage that would come from a war would be worth it in terms of long-term stability and national security.” That’s just what they said before the US attacked Iraq, and how did that turn out? I find it disgusting that the media continues to give airtime almost exclusively to those who promote more US disasters like Iraq.

The Iraqi parliament did something extraordinary last week. A majority of elected Iraqi representatives voted to demand that their prime minister draw up a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from the country. President Obama had withdrawn US troops from Iraq in 2011, after a status of forces agreement could not be reached with the Iraqi government, but he returned the US military to Iraq under the auspices of fighting ISIS.

We had no business going into Iraq in the first place and we have no business remaining in Iraq. Al-Qaeda and ISIS emerged in Iraq because our attack and occupation of the country 15 years ago created fertile fields for extremism. Nothing will be achieved if we remain. Let’s listen to the Iraqis and just come home!

A gathering of rich oil Arabs pledged $30 billion this week at a meeting in Kuwait to start rebuilding war-shattered Iraq. Sounds nice but these kinds of conclaves are notorious for offering big but delivering little.

The event was billed as helping Iraq repair war damage caused by ISIS. In fact, most of the damage from that short-lived conflict was caused by US bombing and a few Russian air strikes. ISIS, as this column has long been crying in the wilderness, was largely a paper tiger confected by the US, Britain and France to justify their military re-entry into Syria.

Iraq’s government says it needs at least $88 billion to rebuild war damage. What the US-imposed client regime in Baghdad won’t or can’t say is that the damage to Iraq is far greater than $88 billion and was largely inflicted by US air power in 1990-1991 and 2003.

Iraq was ravaged, as I saw myself while covering the wars. This small nation of 23-25 million souls, a third of whom were in permanent revolt against the Baghdad government, was pounded into rubble by US air power and cruise missiles. First in 1990-1991, then in 2003, everything of value was blown to bits: hospitals, schools, food factories, chemical plants making insecticide, bridges, and communications. In short, all the attributes of a modern state.

Most shocking to me, was the destruction of Iraq’s water and sewage treatment plants by US air strikes.

Their destruction resulted in epidemics of cholera and other water-born diseases. Children were the primary victims. The UN asserted that over 550,000 Iraqi children died as a result of contaminated water. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright later notoriously asserted that these deaths were ‘a price worth paying.’ I call them a war crime.

In 2003, 900,000 US-directed troops massed in Kuwait, invaded Iraq to finish off, it was claimed, the ‘work that the first president Bush failed to achieve,’ the overthrow and lynching of Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein. If Saddam had any nuclear or broad-area biological weapons, the invader’s buildup in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia would have been a dream target.

But Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons, contrary to US and British claims. I discovered in Baghdad a group of British scientific technicians who had been sent by the UK Ministry of Defense to build outlawed biological weapons at Salman Pak. These included deadly anthrax and Q-fever – but only for use against Iran if a second Iraq-Iran War erupted.

It is now widely accepted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction pointed at the West, as George Bush and Tony Blair incessantly claimed. But this was the excuse for going to war against Iraq and destroying it. When no such weapons were found, the story from Washington and London was changed to ‘oops, it was an intelligence failure. Sorry about that.’

Journalists like myself who asserted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction were fired or marginalized. I was blacklisted at CNN after the White House told the network to fire me at once. All the ‘presstitutes’, who acted as government boosters for the war, were promoted and lauded. Welcome to the new Soviet media.

Since Iraq, one if the Arab world’s most developed countries, was laid waste by US bombing, and since the war was deemed a big mistake, who is responsible for trying to repair Iraq to its pre-war condition? The money offered last week in Baghdad by the Gulf Arabs was a drop in the bucket and designed to bring Iraq into the forming anti-Iran alliance.

If this war crime was being properly litigated, Washington would likely end up being assessed something like $100 billion in damages just to replace physical infrastructure destroyed in the two wars, never mind the deaths of so many Iraqi civilians. Iran would also have a claim against Iraq’s western and Arab backers for Baghdad’s 1980-1988 war of aggression against Iran that caused an estimated one million Iranian casualties.

‘Oops, I’m sorry we destroyed your country and children’ is not a sufficient mea culpa. The western leaders who engineered this criminal war against Iraq deserve to be brought to book. So far, they have gotten off scot free. In fact, the same terrible fate has since befallen Syria, Yemen and parts of Somalia. Were these disasters also mistakes due to faulty intelligence?

With permission from

Environmental modification techniques have been available to the US military for more than half a century.

The issue has been amply documented and should be part of the climate change debate.

Note: There is no evidence of “weather modification” in relation to recent climatic disturbances (hurricanes), but at the same time there is no firm evidence that this climate instability is attributable to greenhouse gas emissions.

The broader issue of environmental modification techniques must be addressed and carefully analyzed.

***

US mathematician John von Neumann, in liaison with the US Department of Defense, started his research on weather modification in the late 1940s at the height of the Cold War and foresaw ‘forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined’. During the Vietnam war, cloud-seeding techniques were used, starting in 1967 under Project Popeye, the objective of which was to prolong the monsoon season and block enemy supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The US military has developed advanced capabilities that enable it selectively to alter weather patterns. The technology, which was initially developed in the 1990s under the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), was an appendage of the Strategic Defense Initiative – ‘Star Wars’. From a military standpoint, HAARP –which was officially abolished in 2014– is a weapon of mass destruction, operating from the outer atmosphere and capable of destabilising agricultural and ecological systems around the world.

Officially, the HAARP program has been closed down at its location in Alaska. The technology of weather modification shrouded in secrecy, nonetheless prevails. HAARP documents confirm that the technology was fully operational in the mid 1990s.

It should be emphasized that while the US military confirms that weather warfare is fully operational, there is no documented evidence of its military use against enemies of the US. The subject matter is a taboo among environmental analysts. No in-depth investigation has been undertaken to reveal the operational dimensions of weather warfare.

The irony is that the impacts of ENMOD techniques for military use were documented by CBC TV in the early 1990s.

The CBC TV report acknowledged that the HAARP facility in Alaska under the auspices of the US Air Force had the ability of triggering typhoons, earthquakes, floods and droughts: .

Directed energy is such a powerful technology it could be used to heat the ionosphere to turn weather into a weapon of war. Imagine using a flood to destroy a city or tornadoes to decimate an approaching army in the desert. The military has spent a huge amount of time on weather modification as a concept for battle environments. If an electromagnetic pulse went off over a city, basically all the electronic things in your home would wink and go out, and they would be permanently destroyed.”

CBC TV Report

Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather

In this article we will provide key quotations from a US 1996 US Air Force document which analyzes weather modification techniques for military use.

The underlying objective from a military standpoint is “Owning the Weather”.

At the time this study was commissioned in 1996, the HAARP program was already fully operational as documented by the CBC documentary.

The stated purpose of the Report is described below:

In this paper we show that appropriate application of weather-modification can provide battlespace dominance to a degree never before imagined. In the future, such operations will enhance air and space superiority and provide new options for battlespace shaping and battlespace awareness there, waiting for us to pull it all together;” in 2025 we can “Own the Weather.” US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report,

“offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary”, capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes:

‘Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies.”

….From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale tailoring of natural weather patterns to complete dominance of global communications and counterspace control, weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary. Some of the potential capabilities a weather-modification system could provide to a war-fighting commander in chief (CINC) are listed in table 1.

Source: US Air Force

Why Would We Want to Mess with the Weather? is the subtitle of chapter 2 of the Report

According to Gen Gordon Sullivan, former Army chief of staff, “As we leap technology into the 21st century, we will be able to see the enemy day or night, in any weather— and go after him relentlessly.” global, precise, real-time, robust, systematic weather-modification capability would provide war-fighting CINCs with a powerful force multiplier to achieve military objectives. Since weather will be common to all possible futures, a weather-modification capability would be universally applicable and have utility across the entire spectrum of conflict. The capability of influencing the weather even on a small scale could change it from a force degrader to a force multiplier.

Under the heading:

What Do We Mean by “Weather-modification”?

The report states:

The term weather-modification may have negative connotations for many people, civilians and military members alike. It is thus important to define the scope to be considered in this paper so that potential critics or proponents of further research have a common basis for discussion.

In the broadest sense, weather-modification can be divided into two major categories: suppression and intensification of weather patterns. In extreme cases, it might involve the creation of completely new weather patterns, attenuation or control of severe storms, or even alteration of global climate on a far-reaching and/or long-lasting scale. In the mildest and least controversial cases it may consist of inducing or suppressing precipitation, clouds, or fog for short times over a small-scale region. Other low-intensity applications might include the alteration and/or use of near space as a medium to enhance communications, disrupt active or passive sensing, or other purposes. (emphasis added)

Critical to the success of any attempt to trigger a storm cell is the pre-existing atmospheric conditions locally and regionally. The atmosphere must already be conditionally unstable and the large-scale dynamics must be supportive of vertical cloud development. The focus of the weather-modification effort would be to provide additional “conditions” that would make the atmosphere unstable enough to generate cloud and eventually storm cell development. The path of storm cells once developed or enhanced is dependent not only on the mesoscale dynamics of the storm but the regional and synoptic (global) scale atmospheric wind flow patterns in the area which are currently not subject to human control. (page 19)

Is the CIA involved in Climate Engineering?

The Involvement of the CIA in Climate Change Technologies

Back in July 2013, MSN news reported that the CIA was involved in helping to fund a project by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) focusing on geo-engineering and climate manipulation. The report not only acknowledged these technologies, it confirmed that US intelligence has been routinely involved in addressing the issue of climatic manipulation:

The CIA is helping fund the research because the NAS also plans to evaluate “the national security concerns (that could be) related to geoengineering technologies being deployed somewhere in the world,” Kearney said.

In an emailed statement, Christopher White, a spokesman for the CIA’s office of public affairs, told MSN, “On a subject like climate change, the agency works with scientists to better understand the phenomenon and its implications on national security.”

Although the CIA and the NAS are tight-lipped about what these concerns might be, one researcher notes that geoengineering has the potential to deliberately disrupt the weather for terrorist or military goals.

John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington-based firm that specializes in addressing emerging security concerns, says that worries about the potential impact of geoengineering aren’t as paramount as the potential security issues that could arise if the United States doesn’t use the technology.

“A failure to engage in geoengineering could impact the political stability of other countries, and that could lead to trouble for the U.S.,” he said.

The NAS project is supported by the U.S. intelligence community, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Department of Energy.

“historical examples of related technologies (e.g., cloud seeding and other weather modification) for lessons that might be learned about societal reactions, examine what international agreements exist which may be relevant to the experimental testing or deployment of geoengineering technologies, and briefly explore potential societal and ethical considerations related to geoengineering. This study is intended to provide a careful, clear scientific foundation that informs ethical, legal, and political discussions surrounding geoengineering.

According to a 2015 report in the Independent (screenshot above), quoting a renowned US scientist Alan Robock:

A senior American climate scientist has spoken of the fear he experienced when US intelligence services apparently asked him about the possibility of weaponising the weather as a major report on geo-engineering is to be published this week.

Professor Alan Robock stated that three years ago, two men claiming to be from the CIA had called him to ask whether experts would be able to tell if hostile forces had begun manipulating the US’s weather, though he suspected the purpose of the call was to find out if American forces could meddle with other countries’ climates instead. (emphasis added)

(Natural News) The U.S. military agency known as DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is investing $100 million into so-called “genetic extinction technologies” that could be deployed to exterminate targeted human populations.

Emails acquired under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), “suggest that the US’s secretive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has become the world’s largest funder of “gene drive” research,” reports The Guardian. “The use of genetic extinction technologies in bioweapons is the stuff of nightmares…” The Guardian reports.

The disclosure of this genetic extinction technology comes on the heels of Natural News blowing the whistle on a global eugenics program to target and exterminate people of African descent as part of an ongoing global depopulation agenda. In a one-hour video lecture published a few weeks ago, I detail the six vectors through which the weaponization of science and medicine is being deployed right now to exterminate blacks. See “The Science Agenda to Exterminate Blacks” for full details (full lecture video below).

Crispr gene editing technology becomes weaponized

The genetic doomsday weapon system now being developed by DARPA is based on the Crispr-Cas9 gene editing technique which allows simple, low-cost laboratories to achieve previously impossible genetic editing goals in almost any organism… including humans. “These might, for example, distort the sex-ratio of mosquitoes to effectively wipe out malarial populations,” explains The Guardian. But they could also be used to wipe out targeted genetic sub-species of humans, too.

“The dual use nature of altering and eradicating entire populations is as much a threat to peace and food security as it is a threat to ecosystems,” explained Jim Thomas, co-director of the ETC group, as reported by The Guardian. “Militarisation of gene drive funding may even contravene the Enmod convention against hostile uses of environmental modification technologies.”

Because much of the funding for modern-day science comes from military and government, scientists are finding themselves forced to work on “weaponization” programs or face a loss of funding. Via The Guardian:

Todd Kuiken, who has worked with the GBIRd programme, which receives $6.4m from Darpa, said that the US military’s centrality to gene tech funding meant that “researchers who depend on grants for their research may reorient their projects to fit the narrow aims of these military agencies”.

The weaponization of gene drive technology — turning genetics into a doomsday weapon — is widely known to be capable of spreading through a population and causing deliberate extinction. “Think of it as a way to supercharge evolution, forcing a genetic modification to spread through an entire population in just a few generations,” reports WIRED. The technology is so potentially devastating that former national intelligence director James Clapper classified gene drive technology as one of many “weapons of mass destruction and proliferation,” according to WIRED, which also said:

Taking into account things like how often Crispr screws up and the likelihood of protective mutations arising, their work shows how gene drives could be ruthlessly aggressive.

Humanity has reached a tipping point of developing technology so profound that it can destroy the human race; yet this rise of “science” has in no way been matched by a rise in consciousness or ethics. Today, science operates with total disregard for the future of life on Earth, and it scoffs at the idea of balancing scientific “progress” with caution, ethics or reasonable safeguards. Unbridled experiments like GMOs have unleashed self-replicating genetic pollution that now threatens the integrity of food crops around the world, potentially threatening the global food supply.

In an accompanying infographic, which I developed and published in 2012, I wrote:

SCIENCE must exist to serve the long-term interests of humanity, not to serve the short-term profits of corporations. To protect the future of life on Earth, science must operate under the Precautionary Principle.

In that infographic, republished below, I categorized genetic engineering technology as a “Level IV” hazard to humanity because it is self-replicating. Other risks posed to humanity by out-of-control science and named in the infographic include artificial intelligence, nano-technology, pollinator disruption chemicals, weaponized vaccines and nuclear weapons. Since 2012, we’ve seen devastating effects on humanity and the global ecosystem from nearly all of these vectors:

Amid tensions caused by North Korea’s latest nuclear test, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated that his country is unequivocally opposed to weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons.

In an interview with Christiane Amanpour on Monday, President Rouhani discussed the possibilities that US President Donald Trump could come through on a campaign promise to shred the nuclear agreement negotiated under the Obama administration.

“Our position has been very clear and remains clear vis-a-vis nuclear weapons. We are against any type of weapons of mass destruction as well as nuclear weapons, and we believe that they must be destroyed around the world.”

He noted that an arms race was unacceptable for Iran, in any region.

Rouhani stressed,

“The position and the actions of the United States as well as other nations against North Korea have not been very positive, and I don’t think there is a military solution to this. Only diplomacy is the tool that will resolve this problem permanently.”

On September 3, North Korea announced that it had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb that could be loaded into an intercontinental ballistic missile, which became Pyongyang’s sixth nuclear test.

In light of these developments from North Korea, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted its toughest resolution against North Korea that restricted oil exports to Pyongyang, banning exports of textiles to the country, as well as restricting the country’s access to gasoline. However, North Korea has not halted its missile and nuclear program, conducting another missile test last Friday.

In that same interview with CNN, Rouhani warned that there would be a ‘high cost’ if the US exited the nuclear deal with Iran.

Recent events confirm the long held view of many that adherence to international law is, for the Americans, at best an optional extra rather than being an essential component of conduct between States.

The first example relates to the current standoff between the US and North Korea. Article 2 (3) of the UN Charter, a document the US was instrumental in formulating, requires that:

“All members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means….”

Article 2 (4) further provides that:

“All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity …..of any State…..”

Scarcely a day has passed in recent weeks without those obligations being violated in respect of North Korea. President Trump himself has threatened “fire and fury like you have never seen”. He, along with his Defence Secretary Mattis and the US ambassador to the Un Nikki Haley have variously referred to “all options are on the table” or “North Korea will be obliterated” and similar phrases, all of which are unsubtle overt threats.

It is not just words. Massive military exercises have been conducted close to North Korea’s borders, both land and maritime. We are told that one of the objectives of the exercise is to practice the “decapitation” of the North Korean leadership. Nuclear-armed bombers patrol Korean air space, and missile systems have been installed. The latter are purportedly for “defensive” purposes but in reality they are part of an offensive missile system aimed at Russia and China.

The second example was the unprecedented incursions by US federal officers into the Russian consulate in San Francisco and the homes of Russian consular staff. This is a breach of one of the most important international conventions, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and Optional Protocols (“the Vienna Convention.”)

Article 22 of the Vienna Convention states:

The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.

The receiving State is under a special obligation to take appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission……

The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property therein and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.

There is no scope for ambiguity here. Inviolable means exactly what it says. What is less clear are the American’s motives for such a blatant and unacceptable breach of international norms. Christopher Black quotes the Russian Foreign Ministry as saying that the only reason for such a search to be conducted, aside from bullying and intimidation, is to use it as an opportunity for the Americans to plant items to be used in their propaganda war against Russia.

That is certainly possible, and it is a reasonable inference to draw from the fact that the Americans demanded that the premises be vacated while the search was undertaken. It is also consistent with a long record of such duplicity by the United States, and its persistent false claims used to justify aggression.

The allegations against the Libyan government’s ‘killing of its own people’; the alleged sarin gas attacks by the Syrian government against its own people; Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction; and Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program are only four of the most recent and egregious examples.

The consequences of those falsehoods have been devastating for three of the four countries concerned. Notwithstanding convincing evidence to the contrary, successive US governments have persisted in these falsehoods, with the willing complicity of the mainstream media.

Black also correctly points out that it acts as a precedent that can rebound against the United States, as the US cannot now logically argue that its own diplomatic missions remain immune.

The third possibility is that the actions were simply a result of terminal hubris and stupidity. The US has long regarded itself as the “exceptional nation” with that perception now irrefutably extended to being exempt from the provisions of international law.

This would not be a novel conclusion as their actions for many decades have long demonstrated both stupidity and a disregard for international law. The invasion and searching of diplomatic premises in violation of the Vienna Convention is therefore simply an extension of a well-established pattern of behaviour.

The third illustration of why the word of the United States cannot be trusted is the one with potentially the most dangerous consequences. The US and its allies have long claimed that Iran had a nuclear weapons program. Israel has claimed for 20 years that Iran was “only months away” from possessing a nuclear weapon, including a bizarre presentation by Benjamin Netanyahu to the UN General Assembly.

The complete absence of any supporting evidence, and indeed the existence of two unanimous US Intelligence Reports to the contrary, was never sufficient to stop the relentless propaganda barrage against Iran, nor prevent the imposition of sanctions.

The net effect was to dangerously ratchet up tensions to the point where a single act of stupidity, such as Israel carrying out one of its multiple threats to attack Iran, could easily have led to a wider war.

Thanks largely to the initiatives of the Russian and Chinese governments, and a rare moment of sanity by the then US administration, an agreement between the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, the European Union’s Foreign Affairs High Representative, Germany and Iran was negotiated. Known as the Joint comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) it was agreed to by all parties in July 2015.

The UN Security Council subsequently endorsed the agreement unanimously on 20 July 2015 (UNSC Resolution 2231). Three key provisions from the Preamble are worth briefly noting:

(iii) Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire nuclear weapons.

(v) The JCPOA will produce the comprehensive lifting of all UNSC sanctions as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program.

(viii) The E3/EU+3 and Iran commit to implement this JCPOA in good faith and to refrain from any action inconsistent with the letter, spirit and intent of this JCPOA that would undermine its successful implementation.

The UNSC Resolution effectively turned the JCPOA into an instrument of international law. The US Congress also passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act under which the President is required to provide a “compliance certification” to Congress every 90 days to verify Iran’s adherence to the terms of the JCPOA.

Under the terms of the JCPOA the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is also entitled to carry out inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities (civilian use is permitted) and issue its own compliance certificates. It has repeatedly done so.

Trump has twice thus far met his obligations to report compliance to Congress, but he told the Wall Street Journal that if it was up to him he would have found Iran non-compliant 180 days ago (i.e. when he was inaugurated).

Trump’s ignorance is bad enough, but it is now known that he has instructed his intelligence agencies to provide proof of Iran’s non-compliance. This is extraordinary and dangerous. Trump clearly has an a priori conclusion that Iran is non-compliant and wants the intelligence agencies to produce what can only be described as ‘fake facts’ to justify his pre-held conclusion.

This is reminiscent of the point noted by the head of British Intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq war when he noted that “the facts were being made to fit the policy.”

The US has also not only failed to life the sanctions in accordance with the JCPOA but has imposed new sanctions on the pretext that Iran has carried out ballistic missile tests (not banned under the JCPOA) and is a “sponsor of terrorism.” Again, facts are not allowed to intrude upon the policy. It is simply impossible to reconcile these and other actions with the obligation of “good faith” in the JCPOA.

The three illustrations noted here confirm the truth of President Putin’s observation that America was HeAOROBOPOCNOCO6Hb1, which I understand, translates as “non-agreement capable.”

The only remaining mystery is why anyone would accept America’s commitment to anything when compliance is completely at the whim of the administration of the day.

James O’Neill, an Australian-based Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.